I was in Italy for a week, staying in a room within a hall of residence block. The space was so tight throughout the whole building that I doubted that anyone even slightly overweight would manage to move around it easily.

I thought that my ensuite bathroom was private, so was rather surprised to find 1995 graduate PG in there first thing in the morning.

‘Don’t you know that this is one of just two bathrooms in the entire block?’ he explained to me.

I vowed to lock my bedroom door securely from that point onwards. I wasn’t prepared to share by space with anyone. They’d all just have to use the other bathroom.

Later that day I returned to my room to find that yet another person was in ‘my’ bathroom. This time it was the cleaner. I started speaking to her in Italian, but she struggled to respond. When we realised that we were both native English speakers she explained that she was busy running a special ‘Italian’ bath for me. The bubbles at one end were white. At the other, beside the taps, they were bright red.